New World Center
- Architect
- Frank Gehry
- Year
- 2011
- Style
- Postmodernism
- City
- Miami, FL
The New World Center opened in January 2011 in South Beach as the home of the New World Symphony, a 756-seat concert hall designed by Frank Gehry one block north of Lincoln Road. Alongside it sits a 2.5-acre public park designed by the firm West 8, after Gehry himself relinquished that part of the job when the park's budget was cut. Together the hall and park turned a conventional concert-hall commission into a public gathering place built around live performance broadcast outward onto the street.
the building
SoundScape wallcasts. A half-acre of the adjacent park, called SoundScape, projects free live 'wallcasts' of performances onto a 7,000-square-foot exterior wall, driven by a sound system of 155 individually tuned speakers, so people outside can watch and hear a concert happening inside for free.
A park by another firm. Gehry designed the concert hall itself, but stepped away from designing the surrounding 2.5-acre park after its budget was reduced, leaving that piece of the project to the landscape firm West 8.
QR codes at the wall. During SoundScape wallcasts, QR codes appear on the projection so outdoor viewers can scan them on their phones and pull up information about the piece being performed inside.
the style
The New World Center is generally described as postmodern, and its most distinctive move as a building is really about performance rather than form: Gehry designed the hall as a projection surface as much as a concert space, with SoundScape's giant wall built to broadcast what happens inside back out to the street.
More on Postmodernismthe architect
Frank Gehry, the Pritzker Prize-winning architect, designed the New World Center as the permanent home for the New World Symphony, though he gave up creative control of the adjoining park to the firm West 8 after its budget was cut.
More on Frank Gehry